


Mirror's Edge

by guyi (yujael)



Series: Island in the Mist [2]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, but just hold on for the ending, sorry for the first one, there are three parts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-12 14:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yujael/pseuds/guyi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael made a promise to Gavin, and he's going to fulfill it no matter what it takes.</p><p>Sequel to We Carry On.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This is part one of two. The whole story is about the same length as We Carry On, but once you get through it, I hope you'll see why it's split up. I also don't think it's as good as its prequel, but you guys are the judge. Happy reading!

There are stories in this world so old, so long, that their endings are still chasing their beginnings, and their beginnings are lost to all but the mists that shroud to horizons. They span over decades, centuries, before men began to count the time, and they are being written still in an endless pattern.

I fear that this is one of those stories.

This tale is a long one which began even before the border to oblivion came down on that land, and it goes on, twice every century, it goes on. There are none in this paradise that remember its beginning; they are concerned only with continuing it, prolonging their own selfishness. I do not blame them for this, for they have no reason to look back. That is our job alone. That, I think, is our payment.

We only wanted to preserve the island. We did not intend to cause this pain.

–

It takes him less than three days to climb down the mountain, a blink of an eye in comparison to the two weeks it took to climb up. When he returns to the town, the people are waiting for him. They cheer for him and clap, happy that their continued prosperity is guaranteed. They rain flower petals on him and he shakes them off without a word.

They try to direct him in the direction of the temple, but he refuses. When he tells them that he wants to go to the shore, they get more and more confused. They ask him why, and he wants to scream back at them, tell _them_ to go climb that mountain, guiding their friend's every step only to leave them behind, and _then_ come back down and ask him again why he won't thank the oracle for her guidance. 

They stop eventually; he insists that he just wants to be alone and they back off. They think he's mourning, and they tell him the statue will be ready soon. He's not mourning, though – he won't stop to think about that. His mind is made up, and there is nothing to mourn.

“ _Isn't it better to think that you're right and not wrong?”_

He's never going to forget what Gavin told him; he's not even going to give himself the chance to forget that one stupid question that made him rethink everything.

No... it's not stupid, he tells himself, standing with his feet in the water, watching the mist in the distance. There's nothing stupid about it and he's determined to prove it.

“ _Maybe they didn't go far enough_.”

They sailed for months but never found anything, and they were forced to come back to the island. That's how every story ends; there is nothing out there for any one. Michael watches the light play across the water, and he can barely see the shifting shadows in the rolling mists. It's the border to nothing...

“They're just stories,” he tells himself, clenching his hands. There's no tradition here to stop him this time. There's nothing to hold him back – the town won't suffer for anything he does now. “They didn't go far enough.”

He wants to believe – he wants to _know_ that Gavin's idea is not in vain. He's going to find what they couldn't. 

“ _I'm going to come and find you.”_

–

All of their records are kept in the library off the church. Michael spends most of his waking hours there, because there are several problems that stand in his way, and he knows he can find the solutions to them in those old book and papers.

The first problem is that there are no boats on the island that can supply a journey longer than a week. He's already located the blueprints, has already started planning where the alterations are going to be.

The second problem stands behind him in the form of the oracle. She watches him come in every day, and she watches him leave. It's taken her a few days, but it's obvious that she's figured out what he's researching.

“What is it you're looking for?” She asks him, leaning on her cane and looking up at him with a somber expression. She doesn't know that he'd broken with tradition, and he's content to keep it that way.

“Anything,” he tells her. Gavin is out there. “There's something out there, somewhere.”

The look in her eyes makes it seem like she's heard that answer before, even though no one has tried leaving the island for the last three centuries. According to the aging records, anyway. She sighs. “What do you think is missing from your life? What reason do you have to search for more? That's quite greedy.”

“It has nothing to do with greed,” Michael snaps. Wealth is completely irrelevant to this. He made a promise to Gavin. He turns back to his current book; the pages are thin and browning, but they're not as fragile as some of the others he's seen. He's been looking through this one for a couple days now – it's a journal with messy, cracking ink. It's old, three hundred and sixteen years, to be exact, and it details the voyage of a man named Ryan.

Five months this man sailed. Michael was reading the last entry when the oracle entered. _Land_ , the man had written, _I've found land_. But he hadn't. Michael read on as he described his dismay. _I thought I'd sailed through,_ the old ink says, _but it was only a trick. The same docks I sailed away from greet me now, and Kara is there, again._

_Twice I've tried. I thought I would know the tricks of the mist this time, but it's as hopeless as ever. We are truly alone in this world._

Five months he sailed, away and away... but never away, only back again. _There is nothing out there_. 

“There is nothing for you to find,” the oracle tells him, echoing the journal, the stories he'd heard as a child.

Michael stares down at the pages, the words of the sailor who'd tried to find the other side of the mist three hundred years ago.

“ _Maybe they didn't go far enough.”_

“I'll believe that when I see it for myself,” he replies.

Time passes on.

–

Cold water washes over his feet, kisses his ankles before pulling back. Washes over again, goes. Ray stands next to him, and they're both watching the gulls flying to and fro over the waves. Michael has blueprints under his arm and Ray has Ryan's worn out journal in his hands. He hasn't said anything to Michael yet. He squints out over the water, his brow furrowing more with each passing moment. 

Finally, Ray takes a long breath and says, “This is about Gavin, isn't it.” It isn't even a question. Ray noticed the change in Michael's attitude almost immediately, knows it's connected with their friend who was chosen to climb the mountain. Michael doesn't want to lie to Ray, so he just nods. Ray returns the gesture. “Thought so.”

“Why?” Michael asks.

“You won't go see the statue,” Ray says, shrugging. “Figured you were a bit depressed about it right up until you pulled out the blueprints.”

Michael almost wants to laugh. “Yeah, this is about Gavin.”

There's silence between them for a few minutes until Ray says, “Well, as much as I would love to be able to read your mind right now, I can't. I'm lost here; you need to elaborate on this a little more, because all I know is that what... what happened with Gavin influenced this decision. Or whatever you want to call it.”

Michael glances down at the journal in Ray's hands. “It's been three centuries since he tried to sail away.”

Ray flips the book over, nodding. “I noticed that. What, you think it's time somebody else tried again?”

Michael purses his lips. He can't possible expect Ray to understand everything – Ray wasn't the one to carry his friend up the fucking mountain. But he tries his best to explain. 

“I promised Gavin,” he says. Ray looks a little surprised and Michael wills the memory to stay at the front of his mind. Gavin's voice is almost uncomfortably vivid. 

“ _What if there's something out there? I mean, what if the people who go up the mountain don't actually die, they just... get put somewhere_ else _? Somewhere on the other side of the mist. And you could actually sail out there and find them...”_

“He asked me if it was possible to sail through. He had this idea and he thought – maybe all those people who went up before him, maybe they're over there somewhere.”

“Over there” is a vague gesture, Michael's hand waving over the distant mist. Ray opens his mouth, closes it again, and then looks down at the sand between his toes.

“You think he's still alive,” he says quietly. “You think he somehow ended up over there, if there is anything there.”

“I don't know,” Michael replies, shaking his head. “It was his idea, and there's no fucking clue at all to help me out here. All I have is a bunch of shitty blueprints and a three hundred year old book.”

“And you're still going.”

“Of course I'm still fucking going,” Michael turns to him, waits for him to look up gain. “Wouldn't you?”

It's a moment before Ray shrugs. “I don't know, Michael.”

“You don't know? What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don't know. I'm not the one who had to climb with him; I don't know what he said to you –”

“I just told you what he said.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“Are you saying you wouldn't go looking for him if you were me?”

“That's not what I'm saying, either,” Ray pauses and runs his fingers through his hair. Michael reins in his temper, too; he's forgetting again that he wasn't Gavin's only friend. “What I'm saying is that I miss Gavin just as much as you do, just as much as everybody else, but you have to think about what's stacked against you here. This guy went for _five months_ and ended up right back where he started, and that's just on top of everything else.

“I'm not telling you to stop, Michael, I'm trying to... I have a good life here, and I'm not ready to risk it. Maybe that sounds selfish, but I wasn't the one that guided Gavin up that mountain. That connection you two had, whether he'd dead or alive or immortal... I don't think I'll ever be able to fully grasp it, and so if anybody's going to try this, there's nobody else who can do it. Nobody else has the reason.”

Michael stares down at the sea foam around their feet. Ray is right, but it isn't selfish. Michael was the one that carried Gavin to that temple, and there isn't anyone else on the island that knows what Gavin said to him. Nobody else has the reason to think that there's something else beyond what they can see.

“If this is something you're really going to do,” Ray continues. “I'm not going to stop you. Fuck, I'm probably one of the only ones who's going to tell you to go for it. If you can handle being in a boat for as long as this guy did, do it; find what's out there.”

“Do you think there is anything?”

Ray shrugs. “Just because I don't have a reason to look for it doesn't mean it's not possible.”

Ray is looking back at him when Michael lifts his head again. He's probably right about the townspeople, but he raises a good point – just because people don't need to find it doesn't mean it isn't there. 

“Thanks for that, man,” Michael says, Ray nods, and then the journal is back in Michael's hand.

“Get out there as far as you can,” Ray tells him. “And if you find him out there somewhere... Tell him Ray said hey.” He claps Michael on the shoulder, squeezes hard, and he walks away without another word.

Time passes on.

–

It's a fisherman that notices what Michael's planning after he was found drawing out an altered version of his boat. After that it gets out and spreads like wildfire through the town. People come down to watch him take apart his fishing boat to turn it into something new. Whenever they ask where he thinks he's going, he ignores them.

It's been over a month since he came down from the mountain, almost two, and his mind is full of all the voices. Even in his sleep, he hears echoes.

“What are you supposed to get out of this?”

“ _Hey, Michael?”_

“The mist is just going to turn you around again.”

“ _Thanks for coming with me.”_

“ _How far is it?”_ He remembers Gavin asking. Everything was so far away then. Now, it's a weight on his shoulders as he works.

He doesn't know why these conversations come back to him, but they do. They bounce around and get mixed up with each other, and sometimes Michael just needs to stop what he's doing and close his eyes, needs to sort out the sounds and stop it from hurting.

“ _You know he's leaving tomorrow.”_

“ _I'm leaving_ tomorrow. _”_

“ _We're almost there, Michael.”_

“ _You think he's still alive.”_

“ _You don't know that.”_

It gets harder to chase them away, because when the simple words are gone, he remembers the dusty, grey temple at the top of the mountain, and he remembers that Gavin was close to crying before he left. But he never saw Gavin crying, and he closed the door. He remembers that the first steps were the hardest and that he had to fight himself to keep going, to not turn around and run back and make sure that Gavin hadn't disappeared. 

There is always something to remind him every day, and it makes his chest feel tighter every time, makes the mist harder and harder to look at – because what if he's wrong? What if he and Gavin are both wrong and there is nothing but fog, and Gavin is...

“Is this going to become a regular thing with you?”

Michael blinks as someone's voice breaks him from his thoughts. He looks at the wood in his hands, and then realizes he's being doing absolutely nothing with it. Then he notices the shadow over him and he turns to see Geoff standing over him, looking down questioningly.

“Is what going to be a regular thing?”

Geoff rolls his eyes. “You're just staring off into nothing. Are you trying to build a boat with the powers of your mind?” His eyes glance over Michael's project. “Although, I guess you don't really need to. You're almost done, aren't you?”

Michael looks back at the piece of wood. He can't remember if it's supposed to go along the rail or it's a part of the mast.

“Right,” Geoff says when Michael doesn't reply, and the older man taps his shoulder. “I think you've been sitting out there for too long. Time for a break. Get up and come over here.”

“Why?” Michael asks, standing and deciding to leave the plank alone for now.

“Because I want to talk,” Geoff replies, leading Michael to the docks. They walk past the fishing boats until they reach the end of the dock where a small sail boat is tethered. 

“You told me to go away from my boat so I could sit in another one?” Michael says skeptically.

“That's exactly what I did,” Geoff answers, pushing Michael in the boat before getting in himself. The sail is down, and there's hardly any wind besides, so Geoff hands him an oar before he unties the boat from the dock. “We're going for a ride.”

“Where to?” Michael paddles in time with Geoff, and Geoff doesn't give him any directions, so they're paddling in a straight line away from the shore.

“Just out and about. I figured it'd be easier to talk out here than anywhere else on the island.”

Michael waits for him to continue, but he doesn't. They row together in silence, and Michael isn't sure what he has to say to him that hasn't already been said. The man also has more reason to stay – namely his family – than to spend his time searching for something that may not even be there.

The island keeps getting smaller behind them and they keep pulling the oars back; it feels like they've been doing it for hours. It isn't until Michael checks over his shoulder that he realizes every paddle is bringing them closer and closer to the mist.

“Uh, Geoff?” Michael turns back to face the other man, and Geoff could not look any more unconcerned.

“Yeah?”

Michael glances over his shoulder again, and Geoff just lifts one eyebrow – he's going to row them right into the mist. Michael stops rowing for a few seconds, but then Geoff kicks him and tells him to stop messing up their course. He finds his rhythm again, and the mist gets closer to his back. Concentrate, he tells himself.

“Now, this is a nice and private place,” Geoff says when the wisps of fog are curling around their oars. He leans over and watches it moving around them. Michael's arms are tired from so much rowing and he's glad when Geoff pulls his out of the water and rests it across his lap. Michael does the same, but they keep floating on.

A fine and private place, he thinks. Yes, two of the only people on the water sailing right on the line between the mist and the clear skies. 

“What do you want to talk about, then?” Michael asks. He has the feeling he already know what it is.

“I mostly just wanted to show you this,” Geoff replies, waving his hand through the thickening mist. It comes back damp. It's the first time Michael has been this close to it and it sends odd shivers up his back. “I know better than to try and stop you when you really get going. You're serious about trying to leave this island and there's nothing I can do to change your mind. So, I thought it'd be good to come out here. This is what you're coming up against, Michael, and I don't even think this is as thick as it gets.”

He's talking about the mist that's now so thick that Michael can no longer see the shape of the island. He can still see the sunlight above them, though. It's probably the only way that Geoff is keeping track of their location. Michael imagines what it will be like to sail even farther than this, to lose even the sun in the dense shroud. Even the sound seems to be blocked out. 

It triggers a tingling sensation in his chest, and he pushes back the doubtful thoughts; he already knew about the mist. It's an obstacle that he's going to overcome. If he starts to doubt himself, he knows he might not be able to keep going.

He can't stop, though. He needs to keep going, because he told Gavin – he swore he would look for Gavin. He could be sitting on the border to nothing, but on the other hand, Gavin could be waiting for him. Gavin could be standing somewhere right now, watching for a boat, waiting for his friend to come and find him.

It isn't hopeless. There's an end to this somewhere, and Gavin is –

He's broken out of his thoughts again when Geoff prods him with his oar. Michael shakes his head and the voices in his head dim enough for him to notice that Geoff is speaking again.

“Sorry, what?”

“You're doing it again,” Geoff repeats. “You know, sometimes it's like you're already in another world. No pun intended. I've never seen you zone out so often.”

Michael runs his hand over his eyes. “Sorry, just – I got a lot of shit on my mind, you know?” Concentrate, he tells himself. 

Geoff nods. “I get it. I'm still worried, though, I have to be honest. I'm worried this is affecting you in a negative way.”

“Negative how?”

“Negative as in... You might be setting yourself up for something that is entirely capable of backfiring on you. Do you get that?”

He does. He's understood that since he said the words in the first place. _“I'm going to build a boat.”_ It's the what-if that Gavin presented in the first place.

“I know,” Michael murmurs. Geoff doesn't seem entirely convinced. “Believe me, I know. But if you think it's bad now, I can almost guarantee you it'd be worse if I did nothing.”

He doesn't think he could handle seeing that statue in the temple while knowing there's something he could do.

“That's how you feel, huh? Well, you're not going to change your mind until you know for sure, so....” Geoff takes a deep breath and slides the oar back into the water. “This is my advice to you, then – don't let yourself lose track of where you're going.”

“I won't,” Michael assures him, letting his paddle dip down as well.

“Good,” Geoff begins rowing again. “Let's get ourselves turned around again, then. I don't want to be so far from the island for much longer. This mist creeps me out.”

Michael follows his lead, and they use the sun to guide them back to clear water. The island re-emerges on the horizon and they paddle back to the dock in silence. His arms move as if they have a mind of their own, and Michael's mind wanders again.

Concentrate, he reminds himself. He thinks about what he said to Gavin, he thinks about the mist. He tells himself to focus as he steps onto the dock, and Geoff pats him on the back before he lets him return to his nearly finished boat.

It's hopeless, they've told him. It's pointless, and you're hand is open to catch nothing.

At night he dreams about the water. He hears the echoes in his head, and he dreams that he finally leaves the docks, his preparations are finished and all that's left is to untie the rope.

“I'm going to prove you all wrong,” he says to them, to all the people who came to see him go. He doesn't know if he'll ever be back, but if he is, he won't be empty handed.

Time passes on.

–

It all seems to move much faster when his boat is finished. His heart feels like it's beating quicker, but at the same time he has a constant feeling of... peacefulness.

No, scratch that. He doesn't feel at peace. Not completely, anyway. Everything is hushed, sliding from one thing to the next. Pieces are falling together without him having to push them. But there are still... things underneath. He can't quite reach them. Can't quite hear what they are. It all escapes him, too lucid for him to catch on, but it all leads him to one thing:

He's finally leaving the island. 

There's a fine layer of fog over the water, fading steadily as the sun rises higher, and Michael can hear the murmuring of the townspeople behind him. Only a few of them know why he's really leaving. The rest are just there to watch the crazy guy go.

“Don't lose track of it,” Geoff tells him as he steps off the dock into his boat. “Remember that.”

Michael nods. Geoff's voice echoes. He sees the man's lips move, but the sound doesn't reach him over the water and the other voices. Geoff steps back, joining Ray a few feet away. Ray's voice reaches him in pieces.

“Get out there as far as you can.”

Behind them, Michael can see the figures of the townspeople, their faces shadowed. The oracle isn't among them. 

“There's something out there,” he tells them. “Even if nobody else has seen it, they didn't go far enough. I'm going to find it.”

He wants to find it so badly. A lot of people started to shun him for it, but to hell with that. He's sailing away and they're stuck here. They're going to look at a piece of carved stone very day and he's going to find the living, breathing person. And even if he doesn't manage that, he's still going to find the land. 

“I'm going to prove you all wrong,” he says. He has everything he needs for a voyage that will last for months, and he's said everything he wanted to say. Ray tosses the rope to him, and the boat starts floating away slowly. Michael lets the sail come down, fill out with the wind, pull him in the direction of the mist. Geoff lifts his arm, waves farewell to him. He returns to gesture, and he watches their figures get smaller and smaller until there's no reason to keep watching the docks. They can't see him and they're all just a dark, blurry smudge against white. 

He turns his back on the island, on the dock. He's sailing out and his heart is racing. Close to him is the journal from three hundred years ago, from the last man who'd tried to sail through the mist. Ryan's words are floating in his mind along with everything else. The wall of mist is coming closer and closer, the compass points him west, and instead of fading away, the fog over the water is getting thicker and thicker, blanketing the island, smothering his boat. It rises up, blocks out the sun like one giant cloud that's come down to sail along with him. The compass points him west, but he sees nothing but white, the occasional shadow, and he hears nothing but the water slapping against the boat.

Nothing but the water and the voices in his head. Echoing... 

“ _I have to, don't I? I'd hate to think about what would happen to this place if I didn't.”_

“ _I can't see; you'll have to guide me everywhere!”_

He can't see the sun, and eventually even the sunlight is gone and he is surrounded by darkness. Night is upon him and there's nothing a few lamps will do to chase it away. So, he sleeps. When he wakes up, he corrects his course, makes sure the compass is always pointing him west. He eats a little, drinks a little, reads the empty pages. Sleeps. Wakes. Sleeps. Wakes.

Time passes on. When he sleeps, he dreams about the island. He thinks about the breezes there and the fields, and all the while he hears the same question over and over again.

“ _What if I'm wrong?”_

–

He tries to avoid totally crushing as many flowers as he can as he walks. The petals that do end up under his bare feet feel soft and cool like the breeze that's blowing through his hair, between his fingers. The wind brings the scent of other flowers, but what he smells most are the daisies. He likes the daisies – they're simple flowers, and he doesn't worry when he steps on them as much as he would an orchid or lily. Simple and white. Kind of calming. Nice. 

So nice that it's the patches of daisies in the field that he decides to lie in. He lets his limbs go wherever they want and stares up at the sky for a while. Birds fly over head, cawing and chirping at their fellows. Michael's pretty sure some other townspeople are in the flower fields with him, but they don't come over to him. Even in his dreams they're shunning him. He closes his eyes and lets all the sounds slip by with the minutes. 

“ _How does it look?”_

“ _The mist? White and puffy, just like every other time we've seen it.”_

“ _I meant everything else. The wind's nice, but it doesn't really give me much of an image.”_

He doesn't know why it's that conversation that comes to his mind first. Maybe it's because they were standing high up on the mountain and everything was laid out below them, a breathtaking sight to see. Maybe it comes first because he's in the flower fields, and everything associated with the flowers is coming along with him for a stroll.

“ _We're just above the forest, just high enough to see over it. It's like a stripe all around the mountain, mostly pine trees. Then it's the flower fields, and I can just barely see the path that we took to get up here. I can see all the flower patches in the field, too...”_

“ _That's a lot of flowers if you can see them from all the way up here.”_

“ _Yeah, and I thought there were a lot in town.”_

He's lying in one of the flower fields, but he feels detached from everything, he may as well be floating on top of them. Like he's on water. There aren't any flowers on the water, though, and he doesn't want to open his eyes again because he wants to stay in the field for a while longer. This is something he'll miss, he thinks. If he ever gets away from the mist, this is something he'll miss.

The field starts drifting away anyway. He remembers sitting in the first checkpoint, lighting the incense for Gavin. There was the strong smell of flowers and smoke curled through the air to the ceiling. The smoke thickens and spreads like glass fogging up, the sound of birds goes and the waves drift in. 

When he opens his eyes, he's on his boat and he's sailing away.

Time passes on.

–

He has a journal with him. Most of the entries are the same, but he writes in it anyway. _I think it rained today_ , it might say on one page. Underneath that it might say, _the mist dampens everything, so it's hard to tell._ Most of the entries are about the mist, but that's to be expected, because there's nothing to see _but_ the mist. He writes in it every day, though – or he thinks he does, anyway. He's been out here for so long that he's lost track of time almost completely. Day bleeds into night into day into night, and the only way to tell that is because day is white and night is pitch black. He sleeps when it gets dark like that, but with very little else to do he ends up sleeping in the white, too, and now everything is muddled up. 

He only managed to keep time for a month, and he knows it's been much longer. The voyage feels like one endless day broken up by long naps and there's practically no hope of getting back on track, so he writes when he wakes up, because he doesn't know anymore if it's been one hour or one night since he fell asleep. 

_I'm not sure anymore how long I've been out here_ , he writes. Under his scrawl are cracked letters that might say, _this mist is enough to drive anyone mad._ Sometimes he writes that he's still sailing west; he's sailing west as often as he can and he's getting closer everyday. That's his motivation. Just keep sailing that way, even if it rains hard and the winds blows like its trying to capsize you, just keep sailing west. You'll come out the other side eventually, he says. _Just concentrate_ , says the voice of a ghost.

Not a ghost. Never a ghost.

 _I bet he's waiting around for somebody to find him_ , says one page. _He's going to punch me for taking so long, but it's not like I can fly over there_. 

He imagines what it would be like, standing on the dock in an unfamiliar place, watching the horizon. And then seeing a tiny shape appear in the distance. He imagines what he'd feel like if it were him, and the shape was getting bigger and he could tell it was a boat. Just the thought alone makes him smile, because he can't wait for that day to come. He can't wait to finally see a clear sky above him, to see the familiar face of his friend, not the one made out of stone. 

“What is it you're looking for?” The oracle asked him.

“Anything,” he told her. Just because people don't have the reason to go looking for it doesn't mean it isn't there.

He closes his eyes and listens to the sound of the water. It moves in a rhythm, coming and going. The journal lays forgotten next to him, and even though it's white around him and he's supposed to be watching the compass, his mind is wandering away. The sound of the water grates on his ears sometimes, annoys him beyond anything else, but at times like these, it's the opposite. 

He thinks about the dock he left behind, lined with fishing boats and filled with the sound of crying gulls, sailors, creaking wood and water. It smells like seaweed and salt, things he's smelled all his life. Time passes on. He thinks about lying on the dock, resting in the warmth of the sunlight. He hasn't seen sunlight without the mist for a while now. 

–

Shadows pass over his body from time to time. First, it was the oracle. She approached him, her cane clicking softly against the wood. He had nothing to say to her, so when she leaned over him, blocking out his view of the clouds, he just blinked slowly and waited for her to leave. He didn't want to see the oracle, didn't want to think about her wrinkled, crooked fingers. She started all this in the first place.

Then Ray comes along, moving around in his peripherals, poking him with rose stems. Most often it's Geoff, sometimes with his daughter, and a couple times he's seen Jack circling around him with an expression like he's trying to solve a difficult problem. Other times he thinks the sailors might be calling to him, but whatever they say doesn't quite reach him. Other people meander by, leaning over him like they're checking if he's alive or not, and he always gets a good look at their faces.

He has a good memory, he thinks. One face might blur together with someone else, but he can still name them. He likes remembering the time he spent with them in the town, all the times he misses.

He likes thinking about trying to sneak a yellow or white flower into Ray's collection of red roses, an atrocity in Ray's opinion. He remembers when Geoff tried to teach Gavin how to ride a horse even though Gavin had a shitty fear of being thrown off. He remembers being amazed at what Griffon can do with a carving knife and a hammer, and the week where Jack had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do with all the salmon in his kitchen. 

Geoff sits next to him with a beer in his hand, saying things like, “Did you ever figure out how to fix that cross beam?” And Michael isn't sure what he's talking about, because he doesn't remember ever having to fix a cross beam. What he does remember is cutting one up and chasing Gavin around the streets with one of the pieces a year or so ago.

He tells this story to Geoff, who gives him the old “that's nice, dumb ass” look in return. Michael doesn't know a lot of people with Geoff's brand of humour. He's going to miss that, too. 

It must be because he's homesick. He hasn't seen another person for weeks, but when he closes his eyes, opens them, closes them, he sees their faces or hears their voices. He wishes he could turn around and see them again, but he's already come so far. He's been here so long, there's no use in turning back just to do it all over again.

Still, though, he misses laying on the dock, misses the warm sun and the cool breeze. In the mist, it's only cool, cooler, and cold, and there is no sun that he can see.

The dock is moving under his back. Back and forth like the steady rhythm of a boat on the water. Sound is muffled more and more until it's gone, and a light fog is curling around his fingers. No, I want to go back, he thinks, I want to lay on the dock again.

But it's already gone. His skin is damp and his fingers are chilly. He's back on the water, the mist is all around him, and he's lying on the deck of his boat, and above him...

–

All he knows is that it's been months since he set sail. He's not sure how much food he has left, mostly because he's been reduced to lying on the deck all day, drifting in and out, and most of the time he feels like he isn't even entirely in his own body. Sometimes it's like he's floating along side the boat, sometimes he's just above where he's standing, other times it feels like he's falling forward while at a stand still. 

The journal is somewhere near him. He forgets to write in it, because sometimes he's not even sure if he's awake or if the mist is intruding on his dreams. Besides that, he's tired of seeing the same entries over and over again, one after the next on top of another. There are too many instances of the word “mist” and it gets harder to read it while he's surrounded by the stuff. It's the same thing every day and it's driving him up the wall.

White, black, white, black, white, black, white, yellow... Yellow?

It's above him and it takes Michael a few moments to realize it – gold filtering through the white. Sunlight reaching through the mist. _Sunlight_. His body goes completely still and he just watches the hazy air; he has to make sure. The colour is dim, but it's getting stronger, brighter. It can't be a trick. 

He's found the _sun_ again.

He sits up slowly, slacked jawed, and when it sinks in he gets to his feet so fast his head spin. The sun, he can see the fucking _sun_. His feet slide on the deck as he scrambles to find his compass – and it's pointing west. It's still pointing west. The mist hasn't turned him around – he's finally escaping it.

“ _There is nothing for you to find,”_ the oracle told him. 

“ _The mist is just going to turn you around again. There's nothing out there,”_ said the townspeople. Michael's laughter rings out through the mist.

“I said I'd prove you wrong!” He shouts to the wind. He doesn't give a shit if it reaches the island again or not. He's far from it, ecstatic and so, so anxious at the same time – because he's reached the end of it, the other side, and he's finally going to know the answer to the question that has followed him all this way.

“ _What if I'm right?”_ Gavin had asked him. _“What if I'm right about all of this, and there actually is something out there?”_

And he's built the boat, he's sailed away. He's come all the way here, where the mist is getting lighter and lighter, and he can see the sun clearer and clearer.

_And even if you're not there...I'm going to tell everyone about you._

He may as well be flying even though he's latched on to the rail as he watches pieces of blue peek through – the sky. Clear sky. It's been... he doesn't know how long it's been. His sense of time is gone and all he cares about is the fact that the _mist isn't endless._

The boat floats across the water, moved along by the wind, and bursts of laughter keep rising from his chest as the fog thins. He can hear so much better, see more than a few feet in front of him – he'd almost forgotten what it was like – and in the distance, he can see...

It's there, Michael thinks, his heart racing. It's there, a dark shape on the horizon. _Land_. _I've found land_. 

“You were right,” Michael says out loud. He has a hard time getting the words out. “You were right, you were fucking right!”

There isn't much he can see of it; it's only a long smudge, jagged along the top – the shape of a mountain rising up. He squints over the water, but there's nothing more he can see, it's too far away. His hands clutch the rail and his boat, but he can't stop the shaking or the weightless feeling he has. He can't shake the feeling that is rising in his chest, that _something_ underneath everything else, the _something_ that has been with him since he left.

Soon, he thinks. I'm coming, I'm almost there, just wait...

His boat cuts through wave after wave, and Michael watches the horizon, but no matter how much he squints, the mist is still in the way. The mist is... 

“ _Concentrate,”_ says the voice in his head. Michael looks around him, and the elation that ran in his veins – confusion replaces it, because no matter how strongly the wind blows, the boat moves on and it's sailing... nowhere. The mist is winding around the mast, smothering the sail like it's trying to pull him back. 

The _something_ in his chest – something is wrong. The mist is clearing over the water, but at the same time, it's clinging to the boat and spreading around him, rising up and blocking out the land ahead. No, he thinks, that's wrong.

“ _Don't let yourself lose track of where you're going_.”

White streaks and black dots run across his eyes and his body feels lighter and lighter. He blinks and rubs his eyes, tries to chase them away. I'm almost there, he thinks desperately, but the farther he sails, the more the shape ahead fades away. No, no, no...

“ _Don't let yourself lose track...”_

“ _Concentrate,”_ the voices tell him, over and over again. Concentrate, concentrate, don't let yourself... He squeezes his eyes shut tight –

And suddenly, he's falling. The deck slips out from under his feet and his hands find nothing to grab onto. Sound dies in his throat and the mist blankets the water as he falls. His skin turns hot and it feels like he falls forever before he just... stops. Everything stops. There's no wind, no sound, no mist, nothing. Everything fades away except the warmth all over his body.

Then he opens his eyes.

The first thing he sees is blue. Blue, blue – the sky. No clouds, the sun somewhere outside of his sight. The first things he hears are gentle waves and birds. The first thing he feels is the breeze on his skin, and then the wood underneath his back. No mist, no coldness. And then everything fall in around him – he's lying down, people's voices and incoherent words are passing by him, and somebody is next to him.

And all Michael can do is stare at the sky above, because his mind is a mess of confusion and his body is heavy and tingling. The mist is... and his boat isn't... He's completely lost. He sits up slowly, and what he sees makes his thoughts crumble. 

His feet are a few inches from the end of the dock, and beyond that the water stretches on until it meets a wall of white. On one side is a boat, his boat, tied firmly to the dock. On his other side, Geoff sits with his feet off the dock and a bottle of beer in his hand. But it's can't – he was – he's not...

It's a moment before he can summon up his voice, and when he does, it feels dry and rough. “Geoff?”

Geoff turns and looks at him, and takes a swig of beer. “Hey, Michael.”

Michael blinks, takes long, slow breaths. He looks away from Geoff's face to the mist. 

“ _Don't let yourself lose track of where you're going.”_

“Geoff... how long have I been sitting here?” Michael asks slowly. He almost doesn’t want to hear the answer. And he regrets asking, because Geoff leans back on one hand and takes a moment to think, his expression contemplative until he replies with:

“Well, for a while you were out there flattening daisies,” he says, gesturing behind them. “But then you moved out here and started laying right there about... three weeks, give or take.”

That can't be right. Michael can't believe it. Geoff is fucking with him – this isn't even... “What?”

Geoff takes a careful sip and stares at Michael sternly. “Do you remember when I said I was worried about how... this thing with Gavin... was affecting you negatively?”

Michael says nothing. His mind is still taking everything in, and it's slow to sink in.

“Well,” Geoff continues. “This is kind of – no, this is _exactly_ what I was talking about.”


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After what has felt like forever, I finally ground this out of the deepest chamber of my heart that I dared to ground out from. Enjoy!

The roads are long and filled with trials. How long has in been since they were first crossed? Since the statues were built for honour and heartache? Centuries. But we have no trouble remembering.

Were we being greedy when we created this place? Perhaps. It took everything we have, and now we can only watch as history unfolds. To speak is a difficult thing, to tell a story is near impossible. We cannot tell, so we must show, but those who know cannot tell, either... So strange. What is it we were thinking?

I think I regret it.

–

The door closes and shuts out the sound of the wind, the birds, everything. The chamber becomes darker with the loss of natural light, and Gavin is left standing by mossy water with candles, incense, flint, and a blindfold. He's left alone with his mind and he has to take a minute to just _stand_ there, because his whole body is shaking and his heart wants to leap out of his chest.

This is it, he thinks; a month and a half has led up to this – a crumbling replica of the town's temple and and the chance to finally learn the truth. The thought of knowing the answer to something has never been so nerve wracking.

He looks down, watching the fire light dance across the water, and he thinks, _I'm going to die_. Maybe not in here, because there are no bones in here – nobody else has died here, but they've never come back to the town, either.

But first things first, he tells himself, turning away from the pool. There are small bowls left on the altar, the remains of candle wax dried on the surfaces. He finally moves his feet, goes to the bag on the floor and digs out the flint, candles, and the last incense sticks. It doesn't matter how the people before him died. He still has to do this, still has to light the candles and pray to the gods so the people in the town can be happy.

This is the one thing he can't fuck up.

He thinks about what Michael said as they climbed the mountain, as Michael carried him the rest of the way. He places the candles and lights them, one by one.

“ _I don't know what the hell tomorrow's going to bring you, Gavin, but it's not going to be some shitty, obscure death.”_

He was trying to calm him, trying to give him hope. But now he's standing alone with only the sound of flickering flames and his own breath, and he knows what Michael said is silly. Everybody dies, and his death is going to be on this mountain and nobody is even going to know how it happened. Shitty and obscure.

He clasps his hands together, does it tight because it's the only way to stop the uncontrollable trembling in his fingers.

 _I'm speaking to the ones above the clouds, above the stars,_ he says in his mind, shutting his eyes. He still feels the wetness. _Please, hear my voice. Please..._

He has to pause and gather the word up in his mind. The oracle taught him the words before he left the temple in the town, he has them memorized... But they won't come. He can't say them in the right order, or without being interrupted by another phrase, a desperate one.

 _I don't want to die here,_ he thinks, _even to join the gods, I don't want to die..._

It's too late for that, though. Something is going to happen here. If there is no trace of anyone else being here but the wax, and they didn't come back down, then something else is going to happen. Gavin opens his eyes. The ceiling's cracked and dingy and doesn't look like it would be the entrance to some god's home.

Maybe they left, and couldn't get back down, starved or fell, and their bodies were covered by weeds... Gavin shakes the image away, summons up the prayer again. Don't think about dead bodies, he tells himself, eyes closed again. Finish this first, at least.

The incense burns with the candles and fills the room with the smell of flowers as Gavin prays, whispers the words under his breath, just to make sure. If any words are missed, they might not hear him. Whoever “they” are. They need to hear him. Something bad is going to happen if they don't hear him.

Which is what he's been told. There's nothing to prove otherwise.

He stands still in front of the altar when the prayer is finished. Eyes shut tight, hands clasped so tight he's sure there's going to be bruises. He tries to breath slow, but each exhale is quick and sounds louder than it should. He doesn't open his eyes, and he can see red and orange, the fire around him. There is nothing left. These are the prayers, she told him, these are the words, this is the incense. Light this here, say these words, and...

The oracle has never been on the mountain, has never seen this temple. All she has are the stars, and they won't guide him step by step, not here, where the sky is blocked.

So he keeps his eyes shut, and wills for something to happen. Anything.

“ _I think you were on to something, Gavin. I think maybe all the people who were up here... maybe they_ did _get put somewhere else, somewhere_ out there _.”_

It feels like so long ago already that Michael was with him. They were climbing together only... only hours ago. Less than that. He can still feel the tension in Michael's shoulders when he hugged him, can still see the reluctance in his walk. Michael didn't want to leave, and Gavin didn't want to go. He'd been hanging onto Michael the entire way, and this was a loneliness he never anticipated.

And nothing's _happening_. Gavin finally opens his eyes and glances around the chamber. Everything is bathed in orange light and smoke is floating along the ceiling – maybe that's it, he thinks, staring. Maybe he has to wait until the fires are lit long enough that the smoke above gets thick enough to cover the ceiling, and then some portal or something will open. Gavin latches onto the idea immediately. It's plausible. Maybe then he'll leave the temple through whatever door appears, and then he'll be – he'll be somewhere on the other side of the mist. Yes.

It's better to think you're right and not wrong, he thinks, finally moving away from the altar. Michael told him that, tried to give him hope. Whether it was false hope, Gavin doesn't know. He doesn't think about it. He stops and sits down next to the pool of water.

There's something more, he thinks. He doesn't dare to say it out loud. There's something more, and...

“ _I'm going to sail away, and I'm going to find it. And if you're there – wherever you end up, you just stay there, and I'm going to come and find you.”_

And Michael's going to come and find him. He's going to try. He's going to sail away from the island – but what if he can't? What if he can't get past the mist and the mist is endless and there's nothing there and – _he's going to die_.

 _Alone_. Shitty and obscure, he's going to–

“ _Stop it_. _”_ Gavin's voice echoes around the chamber. He rubs his hands over his eyes and through his hair, and then stands up. He can't stand sitting down with nothing to see but his own damn reflection. Stuck in a temple with his reflection and his own mind. Maybe I'm going to go insane first, he thinks, walking in circles. I'm going to die and it's going to be even worse because I'm going to go mad first.

He stops, his back to the altar and the water. He stares at the door, a plain slab on hinges, with his fingers crossing over his lips. He thinks, what do I do? What do I do? There's the smell of flowers and smoke all around him, and it's sickening. It's coming to the point where he wants to gag, but his jaw is stuck. He wants to leave, he wants to get out all of this. He hears his breathing and fire crackling and the soft sound of - the sound and the feeling...

...of wind at his back.

\--

It's cold, dark. He can't feel his fingers.

At the same time, he's never been so aware of his own body, and he's surrounded by fog and he can see... everything.

He can see the the temple and he can see the church being built around it. He can see so much colour he can hardly stand to look at it – the flower fields. He can see children running through them, picking every stem their hands can reach. He can hear them laughing, an echo all around him. He can hear hammers on wood and stone, and the sound of water, and on his other side he can see the beach.

All at once, it's gone. It's white and then black, and his fingers are numb. Then it's white again, mist lit up. Mist all around him, dampening his clothes, and in it he can see the mountain. He can see people climbing it, two by two, one pair after another.

They both go up, but only one comes down.

People are walking along side him. They can't see him, but he sees them as they chat to their fellows, leading a cow or two from the field. Their words are a gurgled mess, and their gone, mist spreading over them.

He walks through grass, over hills and stones, and he walks on sand. Water splashed under his toes and he doesn't sink. The mist is all around him and he sees a woman crying. She kneels in front of a statue of a younger woman and her little son doesn't understand what's happening. His sister is gone and she sits on a star in the night's sky.

He's dreaming, he thinks. He doesn't understand half of what he sees; all he knows is that he's seeing so many pieces of the island at once. He's walking and he's walking, everything bubbling up and fading away, split second images on top of ones that seem to last forever. He sees faces and he sees... fire. A dead place. He sees happiness and he sees more tears than ever. Confusion and order building itself up.

He sees the beginning. He sees it all appear, broken, repairing itself, and he wonders what happened. What happened then, what's happening now... All the answers are wavering all around him. He's walking through the mist and everything is laid out before him... is it the gods showing him it all?

He sees the cobblestone roads stretching out and he sees the town square filling with people as the sun sets and the moon rises, and the old crone moves through the crowds that have gathered. Over and over again, she lifts her hand and points at a person, and says, “you.” There's the mountain again, the checkpoints and the uneven path full of dangers for those who can't see.

He feels pain in his feet, but he keeps going. There's nowhere to stop, nowhere to rest. His legs are tired, his breath is scratching his throat, and he keeps going forward. If he looks back, turns around... there's nothing. Icy blackness, promising more pain than he already feels.

Familiar people walk in and out of the mist. They don't see him, but he hears the muddled words between them, remembers walking with them so clearly, and he sees his friend's face right in front of his, a myriad of emotions passing over his features, and his lips are moving. The sound is indiscernible, but he knows the words. He remembers the words.

“ _If there's something out there, I'm going to find it... And if you're not there, then I'll tell everyone I meet about the best friend I ever had.”_

He can't forget the words, even as the memory is gone and he's walking, past the waves, through the mist. There's colour and warmth and there's nothing all around him. There are faces and sounds and voices and stars. He can't feel his own limbs and he stumbles, led along by a wispy hand and a voice in his head, asking him _what if? What if?_

“ _I'm going to find it,”_ says the voice in his head, the only one that makes sense. _Find it, find it..._ He's so tired.

Everything is dripping down, distorting more and more as he goes. There's no sound any more and only flashes of colour. _Find it, going to find it_ , says his friend. He's walked for a life time, he's searched forever, he can't...

It's all gone. The people, the fields, the docks, the mountain, the crying woman and the statue. The island is all gone. Everything is black.

\--

And there is light.

And he is gone forever.

\--

After some heavy dusting work, his house was back to its usual state. He spends most of his time in his kitchen, because he can make as many sandwiches as he want, he's got a good view of the market, and he can see when Geoff, or Ray, or Jack is coming. They've been keeping him away from the docks for a couple weeks now. Michael doesn't mind. He encourages it, actually, considering what overworking himself had resulted in.

He'd spent just over three weeks simply lying around on the dock. Before that, a good month and a half in the flower fields, flattening patches of daisies under his weight. Over two months doing absolutely fuck all.

Which brought it to a total of more than four months since he came back to the town alone.

His boat hadn't even been fully completed before he'd exhausted himself, mentally and physically, and started wandering around a dream world concocted by his desperation. That, the oracle had told him, explained why his dream self hadn't been able to get out of the mist. You can picture something you don't know of, she told him quietly. But you can't live it. Not even if you tried.

When he “woke up” as they said, Geoff brought him to the church and forced him to lie down there to get some actual rest where they didn't have to always have someone next to him to make sure he didn't roll off the dock into the water, or something equally idiotic. Nobody, not even the oracle, asked if he'd like to see the temple. They already knew he'd say no again.

Then, over the duration of a week, they had Michael tell them what he thought he was doing, and they told him what he'd actually being doing; it all made his headache even worse, and didn't make the initial shock any better. He told them about sailing off, about sailing into the mist and just going west. He told them about the journal – which had been taken from him some time ago – and he told them about coming to the other side, seeing land.

A shadow of the island, the oracle told him when he described it to her. He didn't look at her, didn't want to see her, but she'd been by his side almost constantly during that week, and Geoff was standing somewhere outside to make sure he didn't go off “being an idiot again.”

More than a week later, Michael still feels... ashamed. Of himself, of his failure to even build the boat on his own.

“All that was left was that broken cross beam and the rest of the rigging for the mast,” Geoff had told him. “And we had Jack deal with those, because we figured... I don't know, you'd fucking snap out of it if you realized it was done. Didn't work out, though. You just told me a story about how Gavin tried to lasso you once and went on staring at the gulls.”

He'd drink water when prompted, and ate occasionally, but not nearly enough to stay healthy. He lost a fair bit of weight while he was dream-sailing, but he's been gaining it back steadily with sandwiches and steak. He feels lethargic often, but he doesn't think it's because of the downturn in his physical health as much as it is the disappointment.

Look at what you've accomplished, he says to himself. Nothing. Not a single fucking thing; you don't deserve that sandwich, you son of a bitch.

He eats it anyway, because Geoff is working his way through the market toward his house.

Geoff doesn't bother to knock before coming inside, since Michael asked him to come in the first place. It's been a couple days since he last spoke to Geoff. He's had time, alone, to think. That's what all this time has been fore: getting his head back on the right angle. Figuring everything out.

“How're you doing, Michael?” Geoff asks as he takes a chair across the table. Michael crosses his arms over the surface and leans on his elbows.

“Fine,” he replies shortly. Geoff waits for him to keep going; he's built up an amazing patience for this over the weeks. “I've... thought shit through, I guess.”

Geoff nods. “And what's your gut telling you?”

There are always three options. The oracle chooses the mind, the only rational one. Geoff chances his gut, instinct. Nobody ever chooses the heart, maybe because they know it's biased. Michael stares across the table at him, and falls back against his chair, his hands loose in his lap. His heart drove him mad. His mind tells him no.

He shakes his head. “I don't know.”

“Don't know what?”

“I don't...” The words die in his throat. They're hard to say, even in his mind, but they are the truth. It has taken weeks to acknowledge them, and he _still_ cannot _say_ them. It's infuriating and pitiful. He closes his eyes, rubs his fingers over his eyelids. One breath, in, out; two breaths, in, out; three. Finally, with the words lined up behind his eyes, he says slowly, “I don't know if I can do this.”

Geoff says nothing, and for a moment, Michael's lips move soundlessly. There's pain behind his eyes, pressure in the back of his head.

“I made that promise,” he says after taking another breath. “I said it, and I didn't even think twice about it. There wasn't any point then, I just thought that if I kept going, everything would just...”

“Shit doesn't come together like that,” Geoff tells him softly Michael opens his eyes, and Geoff's face is pained.

“Everything else does, though. Everything else just falls in our hands, we don't think about that. But this is different, isn't it?” He waits for Geoff to give him an answer, and there is none. “I said... I said I'd do it no matter what, but damn it, Geoff – what if everything is wrong, and I told him to believe in something that was never going to be true?”

“There's no way to know that,” Geoff says, shaking his head.

That's not the answer that Michael wants – he wants a _real_ goddamn answer, wants to reach across and shake the man until he gets it, even though he knows that will never work. “I know that,” he says through grit teeth. “I fucking know that! Why the hell does everyone keep telling me that?”

“Because you're trying to be the _first_ ,” Geoff says sharply. “You're trying to find what _nobody_ else has found before, _that's_ why you've heard that over and over again. You keep hearing it because you keep asking the question, and _nobody knows the answer_.”

Geoff watches him, the crease in his brow deepening. Michael shuts his eyes tight, and when he opens them again, he's staring at the rafters of his kitchen. You're trying to be the first, he said. But is he really? He wants to try again, he does, but at the same time it's as if he knows he can't.

“I feel like a pile of horse shit,” he says, shaking his head. “I feel like... like if I don't do this, then I'll only give up, and if he _is_ waiting somewhere out there, then... then he'll never...”

His mouth is open, moving, but no words are coming out. It's like trying to pull an arrow out of a wound; he wishes he could just leave it there. Finally, after several long moments of complete silence, Geoff speaks.

“Am I the one you should be talking to about this?” He asks, voice only just more than a whisper. Michael lowers his head, meets his eyes. His mouth is open still, but he has no words to answer with.

Instead, he shakes his head. No. No...

And acknowledging that is just as painful as the rest.

\--

Geoff leaves him quietly, murmuring the usual “I'll see you later,” and patting his shoulder as he goes. Michael doesn't even hear the door shut, and he's alone for the rest of that day, and the next, and the one after that.

He thinks about it, combs through everything again. Brings it all together, sorts it all out once more. It takes him three days to gather his thoughts and his courage, three days to bring himself to a conclusion much too long in the making. Much, much too late.

It's the night after that third day that he finally brings himself to leave his home, when the streets are empty and the sky is blanketed with stars.

A fine and private time, he thinks.

\--

It was finished a month after he and Gavin left the town. A block of smooth stone ten feet high and carved in the likeliness of the one that didn't return. There is no colour in it, but there's a smile on his stone lips as he and the rest of them look down on the chamber. The temple is big and there are many statues, but he finds Gavin's quickly because of the nose. They left his nose as it should be.

He approaches it slowly, and even though there are torches lit the temple still chills him. He stops before the statue, stares up at its familiar face. His grey face. He remembers why it's there, swallows, and remembers why he's here. He sits down in front of the statue, staring at his lap when he starts.

“Hey, Gavin,” he says quietly, his tongue dry. “I... People think that if we talk to a statue... they think they'll hear us, and that's... that's kind of why I'm here. I didn't come before because – I was so fucking sure then that I didn't need to, you know? You wouldn't hear me, because you're not with some god. But now...”

There's the pressure again, the tightness in his throat. He doesn't want to say anything.

But there is still the chance that maybe, just maybe, his words really are reaching Gavin's ears somewhere, and when that thought passes through Michael's mind, everything breaks.

“I'm _lost_ , damn it,” he admits, letting his breath go. “So fucking lost – and even though I want to keep going, I have no clue what the hell I'm _doing_.”

And everything spills out after that, rolling off his tongue, one after another. Coming down, the mantra in his head. The boat, the mist, and the people who told him, warned him, to stop. The dreams that he had – the delusions that he was sailing off to find his best friend, when really he'd almost driven himself mad. Lying in the flower fields and on the dock, telling Geoff old stories, thinking that those were only dreams when they were reality, because those voices and echoes just kept getting louder and louder, and he wanted to believe them so badly. And then waking up and finding out that he was so desperate that his mind had created it all in some attempt to please himself.

Every single detail about how he'd broken down comes out, and once it starts, Michael can't stop it. And all the while, his eyes glaze over and the wetness spills over, and his chest, his heart, his head – they all ache because he's said it before in bits and pieces, but never like this, never as honest with himself as he is now.

“I fucked up before I even started!” He finally exclaims, his voice rising in pitch. Shadows play across Gavin's face, and he gives Michael no reaction, no matter how long he waits for one. He simply smiles and it threatens to tear Michael apart. “I am sorry, Gavin, I screwed up! I promised you, I kept telling you you wouldn't die, and that I'd find you one day. I told you again and again that you didn't have to worry, but that was a fucking mistake, wasn't it? I was _carrying_ you up that goddamn path, I just wanted to...”

 _I wanted you to know you weren't going to be alone, wanted us both to believe it_. But he was the one to close the temple doors and leave Gavin behind. _I shouldn't have left you behind._ Because now he has to try and do it all the hard way.

“ _I'm going to come and find you,”_ he said. He said it because it was so easy then.

“I don't know if I'll ever be able to do this – I don't know if I'll ever see you again... This is different than I thought it would be, and it's – it's _hard_ , Gavin, and even though I'm going to try – I'm going to _try_ – I might never be ready to...”

He stops, choking on his own breath. It comes in short bursts and shudders and he can't stop it, can't get words through it. He pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to lessen the pressure behind his eyes. It doesn't work and his fingers come away wet.

“I told myself I wasn't going to come here,” he whispers. “I told myself that seeing the statue would be pointless, because I...”

_Because I said I would come and find you._

“But I don't know if I can do that,” he says, and gasps, staring at the ceiling. “I'm sorry, Gavin. If you can hear me, I'm sorry. If you're out – out _there_ somewhere, I'm...”

He doesn't know if he can pull himself together long enough – there is one thing he still hasn't said. Not to the statue, not to Geoff, not even to himself, and he doesn't know if he can pull he words from his throat. But he has to – he _needs_ to, because he can't leave here without saying it, he can't do anything if he can't do this.

“ _Remember,”_ he hears in his head. _“Remember me,”_ says the ghost of his friend looking down at him through stone eyes. _“We don't know that.”_

Michael meets the eyes of the statue. “Maybe it is hopeless,” he says to it in a broken voice. He's not even trying to stop the tears anymore. “Maybe there is no point, and I'm never going to get off this island, and you're gone forever. And if that's true, then I came here... to say good bye.”

Even as things are breaking, Gavin smiles down on him.

\--

Two weeks later, the sky is clear, even in the early morning, and there isn't any fog over the water. There are a few people out, fishermen putting out their nets or pulling them in, a few guys waiting around on the dock. Michael, Geoff, are among them, and an odd sort of reluctance hangs in the air between them.

It's been more than a month since Michael's heard any echoes in his sleep, since he's heard any incessant voices in his head. The waters are calm, wind is nice...

It's time to go.

Michael watches the sky while it turns from inky blue to pink. The eastern horizons are lighting up steadily, but he can't see the sun yet. When he sees the sun, he'll go. He decided that a few days ago – he doesn't want to leave when there would be a lot of people gathered, doesn't want to make that kind of spectacle. Geoff and Ray agreed with him, and now they're waiting with him. He's already said his good byes to everyone else.

He has enough supplies – or at least he hopes he does – to last him for at least five months, and he has things to keep him occupied. His compass is tied around his neck, and he's facing west. All that's left to do is let the sail down.

“There it comes,” Ray says, breaking the silence. They squint at the horizon in the east and the sun darkens the mountain's silhouette as it rises. Just a little more, Michael thinks. But not too long. He glances back; the town is quiet, but more people will be getting up soon. Just as he's turning back, Geoff pulls him closer with one arm.

“This is it, you crazy bastard,” he says, clapping Michael on the back with his other hand. Michael doesn't mention the pitch of the other man's voice and returns to embrace. He wants to tell Geoff that he shouldn't be getting worked up over anything, but the words get stuck. “I ain't got anything left to tell you that you haven't already heard six hundred times.”

“I'm not going to _die_ ,” Michael says to him. Geoff pulls back and looks at him for a few seconds, a hard expression on his face, conflicted. Then he cracks a smile.

“You better not. If you're still going out there after all this bullshit, then you better find something and prove every other ass hole how wrong they are.” He reaches up and pinches Michael's cheek. “That's one for the road.”

Geoff lets go, and Ray pulls something out of his pocket and holds it out to Michael. It's a rose, crumpled a little from Ray's pocket, and when Michael takes it he realizes it's fake.

“What's this for?”

Ray shrugs. “Something to look at, you know? What if there aren't any roses where you're going?”

That pulls a chuckle from Michael's throat. “That's really where the world ends, isn't it?”

“Exactly,” Ray nods. “World's not ending if you've still got roses, right? Although, if it starts smelling like an actual rose, you should probably throw it overboard.”

Michael twirls it between his fingers a few times, cloth petals glued to a fragile wood stem. Only Ray would give him something like this and say that. He laughs again and wraps his arms around Ray.

“Gonna fucking miss you guys, you know that?” He says. He's going to miss these two idiots, and every other idiot that he's leaving behind. Ray pats his shoulder, and his eyes are stinging.

“We know that,” Ray replies quietly. “We'll miss you, too, you know? Cause first Gavin and now you...”

“You better find him, too,” Geoff says. “You better get out there and find land, and find Gavin.”

Michael releases Ray, nodding. “That's why I'm out here, isn't it? Have to finish what I started.” Even if there's nothing out there...

“That's why _we're_ up at the crack of dawn, ass hole – to say good bye to you.”

“Maybe not forever-”

“Sun's coming up, Michael,” Geoff cuts in before he can finish. “Are you getting off this goddamn island or not?”

The sky gets brighter with each moment as the sun rises higher above the mountain. Michael glances back at the town again, sees the church and the blue roofs. Behind them are the flower fields, behind them is the mountain. An uneven path winds up the mountain, and the smell of incense lingers in the checkpoints. There's a temple on the mountain, too far away to see from the shore. There are no bones inside. Just water and old wax and cracking bowls.

He looks up, and there aren't any clouds or stars in the sky. He imagines a stone grey figure with a necklace of pearls and wooden beads looking down at him, and it disappears with the wind.

“Yeah,” he says after a minute. _It's time to go_. Ray starts to push him to the gangplank, but before he can step on Geoff draws him into a seconds hug. This one is longer, tighter, and Michael almost stumbles with the force of it.

“I said I wasn't going to die,” he reminds Geoff, who promptly whacks him in the back of the head.

“Doesn't mean you're coming back,” he says gruffly. He holds on the way Gavin did in the temple. “Just let us know there's something to look forward to, be it a whole goddamn world or the chance to fucking see you again.”

Michael gives Geoff another pat on the back, trying to be reassuring even though his own eyes are wet. “I promise,” he says.

“Idiot's still making promises all over the place,” Ray says as Geoff lets go again.

“I meant it,” Michael tells them. They all but shove him onto his boat.

“I know you did,” Ray replies. “Again, that's why we're even here in the first place. You can't let a fucking promise go.”

Geoff unties the rope that tethers Michael to the dock, and they both step back. _Good bye_ , Michael wants to tell them. _See you later_. He can't, though, and as the wind fills the sail, pushes him away from the shore, all he says is, “Thanks, you dumb idiots.”

They just smile back, and Geoff gives him a thumbs up.

“Tell everyone else I said bye!” Michael shouts when he's almost out of earshot. “And if I don't come back-” he glances down at the rose in his hand, twirls the stem around over and over. “Tell them all 'I proved you wrong you sorry bastards!'”

And Geoff is waving as he sails across clear waters, their laughter echoing on the wind. They stand on the dock, watching him, and he keeps looking back until they're too small to see, until there's nothing to see anymore.

He sails into the mist with a wood and cloth rose in his hand and he thinks, _I want everyone to have something to look forward to._

\--

It's not like the dream. It's close, but now he can really _feel_ it, can feel the dampness clinging to his hair and seeping through his clothes the longer he goes. There's a strange clarity, too, even though everything is muted. It's like there's nothing to the world except this boat. The mist has smothered everything else and the water has swept it away.

At first, everything is quiet. Peaceful. There's nothing to see but the mist, just like in his dream. There is dim light, but he can't see the sun, and he wonders if everything will be pitch dark when night comes, or if maybe the moonlight will be able to reach him, too. He doesn't have the journal with him, the centuries old words, but he still remembers some of it.

He has a journal of his own in its place, and he uses it to mark the time. Not hours, of course, just the days that slide by as they drop into darkness (where barely any light at all reaches him, with the exception of his lamps). He doesn't write down anything but the days – not only because there's nothing to say about the mist that would be different than the days before, but because he knows that if he thinks too hard on it...

Well, he's just not going to think about that, either.

Instead he concentrates on what he eats, making sure he won't run out of certain foods after just two weeks. He concentrates on making sure the compass is still pointing him west as he reads one book after another, or fiddles with the clanking music box that Jack gave to him as a joke. He makes sure he's never idle, or letting his mind wander back into those illusions from before. That's the last thing he wants.

Ten, fifteen, twenty two, twenty nine, thirty seven...

The days and then the weeks pass by quietly. Michael counts them, and when they get especially lonely, he picks up the fake rose again and twirls it around. It smells like glue and dampness, which isn't unusual, because everything is damp, and it smells worse for days after it rains. He's glad he brought layers to ward off the cold, because sometimes the chilliness gets so bad that he can't feel his fingers. It feels like a place from a story, a dark one, and he's a soul wandering through a dead place.

Every day he sails farther from the island, and every day he feels a tug in his chest. Homesickness, he thinks. He's always reminded of home. He looks back the way he came, and he wishes that he knew just how far he'd gone, but that's impossible. After almost two months at sea, all he knows is that he's far, far from shore. All he can do is check his compass, and take comfort in knowing that it's pointing him west.

That is, until just over the second month at sea, when he wakes up and checks his compass, and sees it spinning, and spinning, even when he changes his course, it's spinning. There's spike of dread in his chest – _he's sailing the wrong fucking way_ – and then he whacks it out of impulse. The thin red needle freezes, and Michael is flooded with relief as it slinks back to the _W_ marking as he shifts his course again.

He leans against the rail, and manages a laugh. “Panicking for nothing,” he says to himself. “Get a hold of yourself, Michael.”

He sits on the deck, eats a little bit, marks down the day – seventy – and laughs at himself again for being an idiot.

But a couple days later, it happens again, the again the day after that. Michael feels less and less sure of himself; something in the back of his mind is nagging him, but he can't figure out what it is.

All he knows is that something is wrong, because a week later he wakes up to a spinning compass, and no matter what he does it doesn't stop. His compass is useless and there's nothing to see but the mist, nothing to tell him what way the wind is pulling him. He has no fucking clue where he's going.

What he sees the day after that makes him wish he had Ryan's journal again, makes him want to look over those words again if only for some goddamn reassurance, because he's pretty sure the mist is playing tricks on him.

\--

At first, it's a flash of colour in the corner of his eye. Red. Just the rose in his hand, he tells himself. He goes back to making sure his boat follows the wind – it's all he can do while his compass is broken.

Then his heart jumps when he thinks he sees gold in the distance before it fades away into the haze. He sails toward it, but it doesn't reappear.

“Stop it,” he says to himself out loud. “This is what you're trying to _avoid_ , dumb ass.”

He steels himself again and keeps going, the rose always in his sight. World can't disappear if there are still roses, Ray said. It's a stupid sentiment, but it helps keep him sane.

Or so he thinks, because then the colour of the petals seems to spread, and Michael almost drops the rose in shock before he realizes that the mist is dyed crimson off the his left – and then it's not. It's just white and his blood is running way too fast in his veins.

He tries to calm himself again as the mist goes dark, as the sun he can't see sets and the only light is from his lamps. He can't see anything in the mist when it's dark, and he convinces himself that it was a trick of his own mind, probably caused from just staring at nothing for long periods of time. He eats some of his dwindling food store, goes to sleep; when he wakes up, he twirls the woods and cloth rose between his fingers, wondering what everyone on the island has been doing since he left.

It's another couple days gone before it happens again, and that time it's not something he can push away – it's green and then the colour of angry storm clouds. It stretches out all around him, and then it's gone again and leaves Michael staring over the rail of the boat.

 _This mist is enough to drive anyone mad,_ he thinks. He tries to convince himself otherwise, but there's nothing else – if it's not his own fucking mind, then what is it? He clutches the rose tightly in his hand, think about how he stood on the dock and saw the mist on the horizon, thinks about sailing into it with Geoff. There was nothing in the mist, isn't anything now. How long did that man sail before? Five months. Ryan came back after five months and Michael's been out here for... how long has it been?

He scrambles to his journal in the cabin, flips through the scores and counts them. Ninety days; three months, that's... He could be sailing back to the island right now. He shuts the book, tosses it across the room and goes back out to the deck. He doesn't want to end up back where he started again – doesn't want to be in this goddamn mist anymore – but he's completely lost. All he has is the hope that the wind is leading him west, and even that is being undermined by the fact that –

_There is something in the mist._

Michael freezes, looks out off the prow of the boat as something forms in the mist. Colours and shapes. Blues and greens and gold and grey – the island. _No_. Michael stumbles back when he sees the jagged shape of the mountain. He has to turn this thing around, he can't go back to... He stops again, because there's nothing there anymore. Just as quickly as it appeared, it's gone.

He turns around slowly and holds onto the rail, staring at his feet. Fuck, he thinks. Fuck, fuck, fuck...

The compass is broken. He's seeing things in the mist. He has no idea where the hell he is.

This mist is going to drive him insane.

\--

In the beginning, it only happens every couple of days, just often enough for Michael to convince himself that something is going very, very wrong. His mind or the whole world, one of them is getting screwed up. He wants to believe he's dreaming. He misses home so much that it's all he can see...

You could sail for months and not find anything, they said. The mist is the border of oblivion. If they were talking about an endless expanse of white fog, they were wrong.

He sees splotches of colour and vague shapes. Some of them are moving, some are still until he sails right through them. Most are gone in a matter of seconds, but as more days pass they stay longer and longer. Michael can hardly concentrate on anything, ends up focusing on the pictures that he passes by for the entire day.

It's the island, he thinks. He's driving himself mad again with his own memories – the flower fields and the crops waver alongside him and it looks like he's sailing through grass. He sees the mountain standing in the east, sees the town at its foot, and the church. He sees...

Fire. Ruins. A dead place. He backs away from it, tries to turn the boat somewhere else, but then he sees the town again, sees it expanding around the old temple. That's not his memory.

What the hell is happening?

His body feels weak; tired. All he knows is that more than two weeks have gone by since he saw that first burst of red. Everything is just... it feels endless.

He sees different parts of the island, and then he sees people walking about the deck with him and he almost falls back before he realizes that they aren't _real_ , and the sounds he's hearing don't make any sense. It's all gibberish.

But at the same time, he understands the words, the echoes.

He sees the temple, the statues. One after another. He sees people chipping away stone to create a face and he sees a woman crying. He sees a lot of people crying, and he sees one oracle and then another, another, another, as they walk through the plaza. They point at someone and then say, “ _You_.”

He sails over the mountain, and he sees people climbing the path. One of them is blindfolded, and he wishes he could tell them to turn back, even though he never turned back. He never turned back...

And then faces he recognizes are in the mist, walking off the deck beside him. Everything they say is a gargled mess, but when he sees them he knows that he's heard them say it before, because he was walking with them. He's not in these images, though.

He sees a statue in the fog, the stone eyes staring down at him with a smile on its lips. The lips don't move, but he hears the sound anyway.

“ _I get what you meant, Michael. I get that going up there doesn't mean that I'll be immortal and never actually die.”_

“That's stupid,” Michael murmurs as he slides down to sit on the deck. “Everybody dies at some point...”

The colours used to fade with the light. He waits for the light to fade, for everything to go away.

It doesn't. For a long, long time, everything is white.

\--

He looses count of the days. They might be passing, but Michael doesn't know it. The sun never sets no matter how long he waits for it.

Although, when he realizes that when he looks out and sees nothing but the mist – just the white, not the colour – he manages to find some sanity again. He holds on tight to the rose, and it still smells like wood and glue. His body trembles when he moves about; he needs food, but he doesn't have a lot of it left, so he only eats when it starts getting difficult to ignore.

He's going to run out, he thinks. Time might be frozen, but he still needs to eat, and he doesn't have enough supplies. Five months is going to come and go, and if he's really sailing toward the island again, then why hasn't the sun set at all?

Or maybe he's lost again, dreaming. If that's the case, then he wishes he could at least dream of the island.

“I shouldn't have come out here,” he says to know one. He should have listened to them. He stares up and wishes he could see the sky again, the _actual_ sky. He wants to see blue, and a goddamn sea gull flying by, wants to hear something other than the water against the side of the boat.

He should have just stayed there, should have gone to the temple every once and a while... but that sounds so _wrong_. He couldn't do that, couldn't sit there and do nothing, especially when he promised Gavin.

“ _What if there's something out there?”_ Gavin had asked him as they climbed the mountain. _What if?_

He closes his eyes. “I'm sorry, Gavin,” he says as he drifts. What else is there for him to say? “I'm so sorry.”

He draws the compass out of his pocket; he kept it there because he'd hoped that it would somehow set itself right. He didn't want to risk taking it apart. It's still spinning in circles, the needle never stopping. He still has no idea which way he's going.

“I tried,” he says, clutching the compass in one hand and the rose in the other. “I really tried. But this mist is – there's just no _end_ to it. There's nothing...”

There's the cold and the dim light. There's the water and the wind, and the colours of his screwed up mind. There's no land.

He stands up slowly, makes his way to the rail again, leans over it. The waves smack the wood, trail behind the boat in ripples and disappear. If he's going anywhere, it's probably back to the island. Everything is going to be for nothing. He grits his teeth as he thinks about the past however long it's been. He went into the mist, he travelled for days and drove himself mad for some stupid dream, for that stupid question.

_What if?_

He was wrong. Everything is wrong.

He looks down at the rose. _“World's not ending if you've still got roses, right?”_ Nothing's ending because there's nothing _to_ end. The mist doesn't fucking end. His eyes sting and the petals get blurry, and he thinks that if he really does come back to where he started... he's not sure if he has it in him to try again. Maybe he's just going to die out here in this place, this time that refuses to move forward even though the wind is still blowing.

His grip on the wooden stem loosens. The petals are starting to fray, and he blinks away tears as he lets the cloth slide down through his fingers. _I'm sorry._

He slides back down to the floor, shuts his eyes tight, praying that something will have happened when he opens them again. Nothing happens, not for a long, long time.

And when something _does_ happen, he doesn't know if he's asleep or awake.

\--

He doesn't have a whole lot of energy to move around, so his mind just slips away. When it comes back for a moment or two, he thinks about eating, and then remembers that he doesn't have anything to eat anymore. Have to get energy, though, says the voice in his head; if only to get back home. So, he sleeps some more.

He drifts on and on...

Something wakes him up again. It's a sound, a loud one, and he can't figure out what it is. It's familiar, though... It comes again, echoing, and draws Michael further away from sleep. When it comes a third time, he opens his eyes, and it takes a few seconds to register the fact that he can't be dreaming, or else he wouldn't feel the pain of hunger.

Blue. He sees blue. He sees the fucking _sky_. Michael's heart leaps in his chest and he sits up slowly. He's been lying on the deck for a while now, and when he looks straight ahead, he sees a bird sitting on the bow of the ship. He sees a goddamn _sea gull_. He blinks a few times and it shrieks again before flying off. Michael swallows – his throat is horribly dry – and he manages to push himself to his hands and knees, get up far enough to look out at the horizon. He squints, his head light and spots dancing over his eyes. He sees a shape ahead of him, large and dark, a rough outline along its top. A mountain. The island.

He swallows again, his throat just as dry. He's back.

Something in his chest feels like it's breaking. Dying. He falls onto his back again and closes his eyes, doesn't take the time to figure out what's breaking and crumbling, because there's no point in it.

As he drops off again, he wonders if Geoff or Ray will be waiting for him when he gets to the dock.

\--

It's someone's voice that wakes him up after that. He doesn't catch what they say, but then he hears a second voice a moment later.

“You sure he's still alive?”

“He's got a pulse,” says the first voice. Somebody slaps his cheek. “Hey, come on, kid. Wake up.”

Michael shakes his head. He's too tired. The person is insistent, though. Once they see he's awake, they give him another couple slaps.

“Looks half starved,” says the second voice. It's not Geoff or Ray.

“Hey, kid, can you hear me?” The first voice asks. It's not Geoff or Ray, either. It isn't a voice he can recognize.

Michael finally opens his eyes, and above him he sees the faces of two men. They exchange relieved expression and then focus on him again as he tries to put a name to their faces. It takes longer than it should. He's been away from the island too long.

“Finally,” says the first guy. “I was wondering if you were already half dead.”

“I think he _is_ half dead,” says the second guy. “Can you stand?”

Michael opens his mouth to say something, but his mouth is dry and he's pretty sure he can't stand right now. The men don't wait for a response.

“Probably not in his condition,” says the first guy, getting his arm under Michael's shoulders. “He's soaked, and might be sick, too. Let's get him out of here.”

They lift him up together, and at that point all he can think about before he falls unconscious again is the fact that he has no idea who these men are.

\--

He's not sure how much time has passed, but when he wakes up again, the first thing he notices is that his throat isn't as dry as it was before, and he's also much warmer. He opens his eyes and stares up for a few seconds, before he realizes that he's staring at the ceiling, not the sky. He's inside, and in a bed. But not his bed.

He looks around slowly and wonders why nobody had the sense to bring him to his own goddamn home. If he's going to wallow in his own failure, he wants to do it in his own bed. This room is completely unfamiliar, and not just because there's an orange cat stretched out next to his feet. Who's cat is that, again?

Somebody leans over him, and it's one of the men from before. “You awake, kid?”

Michael blinks once, staring up at him. He pull his brow down. “'M name's not kid,” he tells the unfamiliar person.

“Well then, what is it?”

It comes as a surprise to Michael, because who hasn't heard of the idiot who tried to sail through the mist?

“Hello?” The man waves a hand over his face. “Did you hear me?”

“Michael,” he says groggily. “You know?”

The man shakes his head. “No, I don't know... I think you need a little more sleep, Michael.”

Michael blinks again, swallows, then nods. Something's not right, but he's too tired to figure it out, so he just closes his eyes again.

\--

He opens his eyes again to the smell of food. The same ceiling is above him, but the cat at the end of the bed is gone. When he looks to his left, there's a chair next to the bed, and on the seat is a bowl of some kind of porridge and a note that says, _get some food in you, kid_.

The desire for food overwhelms the thought of going back to sleep pretty fast, and Michael musters up all his energy to sit up and grab the bowl. It's warm and has fruit in it, and Michael drops the spoon after a few bites, opting to just tip the bowl to his lips, because he's so goddamn _hungry_. The bowl is empty within seconds, and he feels fuller than he's been in – fuck, in months.

The bowl and the spoon go back on the chair, and Michael falls back to the pillows. There's nobody in the room with him, anymore, and he tries to listen for a voice or a footstep. The quiet sounds of voices and animals from outside end up lulling him back to sleep.

\--

Somebody nudges his shoulder, shakes him awake. “Hey, wake up.”

Michael opens his eyes, already feeling a little stronger than the last time he woke. The man is back with his cat, and he has a different bowl in his hand, which he holds out to Michael.

“You're looking a bit better,” he says as Michael takes the bowl. It's filled with soup that Michael practically drinks. “Good to know you're not actually dying.”

Michael takes a few seconds to consider that before he asks, “I was dying?”

“Pretty close to it, I think,” the man tells him. “My friend and I found you half starved and dehydrated a couple days ago. I kept having to give you water and tea because you wouldn't stay up long enough to actually eat.”

Michael frowns. He has no memory of that. “How long have I been out, again?”

“Not too long. Only a couple days,” the man shrugs and adds, “well, from what I know, at least. Hell if I know how long you were lying on that boat of yours.”

Michael thinks back to when he was still in his boat. Everything is hazy and distant, and his frown deepens as he turns to the man. “Where's Geoff?”

It's the man's turn to frown. “Who?”

Michael stares at him. “Geoff, you know.” There's only one Geoff.

He shakes his head. “No, I don't know.”

Michael keeps staring at him. “Ray?”

“Ray Mundy?”

“Ray Narvaez,” Michael says, and then tacks on, “Jr.”

“Doesn't ring a bell,” the man says. “Where're you from, kid – Michael?”

Michael opens and closes his mouth for a few seconds. Something is wrong. Where is he from, what kind of fucking question is that? There's only one place he could... be...

He opens his mouth again, and it takes a bit of work to get the words out. “Am I... am I on the island?”

The man looks confused. “What island?”

“The – the island,” Michael says. The fucking _island_. “Aren't I – aren't we on an island?”

“This would be one gigantic island if we were,” the man tells him. “But we don't have any islands this side of the continent; the only thing you'll find east of here is Arcadian continent, and you might as well just go west over land for all it'll take to sail there.”

“So... So, I'm not on the island?” Michael asks. The man shakes his head slowly, the expression on his face wary. Michael turns away from him and leans against the headboard, slack jawed. He can't believe it.

He feels his heart beating faster in his chest, and he grips the blanket tightly to stop his hands from trembling. Not on the island, the man told him. There aren't even any islands this side of the goddamn _continent_. “Holy shit,” he breathes, his lungs feeling constricted. “Holy fucking shit.”

“Are you all right?” The man asks as Michael's breath gets quicker, shallower. “Hey, are you –”

“I'm fine,” Michael says quickly, his voice pitched higher. He's more than _fine_. A chuckle escapes his throat and he almost chokes on it, and then he starts laughing, leaning forward with the force of it. The man on the chair leans back a little, thrown off by Michael's laughter, but he doesn't stop, can't stop.

I did it, he thinks. He fucking _did it_. The island – it's gone. He doesn't know how it's gone, but it is, and what he does know is that he _escaped the mist_. He keeps laughing, and tears come to his eyes.

“ _What if there's something out there?”_ Gavin had asked him. What if? What if they didn't go far enough? But he went far enough. He sailed through, he made it.

“He knew,” Michael chokes out. “I can't believe it, he fucking _knew_.”

“What are you talking about?” The man asks. He sounds genuinely concerned.

“Gavin,” Michael replies, leaning back and crying to the ceiling. He doesn't even try to stop the tears.

“Who's Gavin?”

“My – my friend; he told me about...” Michael trails off, pressing the palms of his hands over his eyes. “He told me we could get off the island, and nobody believed him – but he was _fucking right_!”

Everything comes flooding back to him and it makes the tears come harder. What if the people who go up the mountain don't actually die? What if they're still alive? What if they're out there somewhere on the other side of the mist...”

“He thought he was being stupid,” Michael says, taking long, deep breaths. “He thought he was an idiot for thinking there was something on the other side of the mist.”

“What mist?” The man asks, and Michael starts laughing again, because _doesn't even know what the mist is_.

He's either dead, or the island is long behind him.

\--

It's a while before Michael can calm down long enough to speak properly. Even then, the man makes him lay down again and sleep some more.

The guy says his name is Burnie, and Michael's pretty sure that Burnie thinks he's delusional.

Michael keeps trying to catch him off guard, ambush him with a question, because he needs to make sure – he needs to know that he isn't having a twisted dream, one so horrible that it goes against everything the oracle told him about dream-living. At one point, Burnie asks him if it would be okay to take him to the doctor when he gets enough strength back. Michael thinks about that for a second, and then shakes his head. There's only one thing he wants to see.

Three days later – three true days, sun sets and moon rises included – Burnie gives him a clean set of clothes and takes him out to the street. There are people everywhere, greeting Burnie as they pass, going about their business, and Michael thinks he might be in shock, because none of them are familiar.

Nothing is familiar, but only moments later, he can smell the sea on the wind, and then they're walking along a cobblestone port road; it drops off into the water, and the water stretches out in all directions to the horizon.

And the horizon as as clear as the midday sky above them.

“Hey, you okay?” Burnie asks as his legs start to tremble.

“There's no mist,” Michael chokes out, staring at the ocean.

“We don't get too much mist around this time of year,” Burnie tells him with a slight frown. Michael shakes his head; that's not the mist he's talking about. He looks at the waves, and sees boats docked further down the road. Then he turns around, and over the roofs – the red-shingled roofs – he sees a mountain rising up. Multiple mountains; this town is right up alongside the foot of them. He'd seen these mountains before, but he thought...

“Where am I?” Michael asks weakly.

“Austin,” Burnie tells him. “East end of the London Coast.”

Neither of those are in any way familiar. Michael turns around again slowly, and Burnie watches him with a concerned expression.

“Where did you say you were from, again?” He asks. Michael doesn't answer; he stands still for a few seconds, and then sits down on the ground. “Are you sure you're okay?”

“I need a minute,” Michael tells him distantly. He needs a minute or two to take everything in again. An ocean stretches out before him, and according to Burnie, there's nothing east of here except for another continent. He's in a town called Austin, where the citizens have never heard of any god or oracle of his, where the roofs are red and the world is not limited by a wall of mist.

He left his home months ago, sailed through the mist for so long that he ran out of food and almost starved to death. He wants to believe everything he saw were hallucinations, but they're all still so clear in his mind, vivid and real. He gave up hope during an endless day, and he closed his eyes... and woke up here.

He did it all for a promise. How he did it, Michael's not sure if he'll ever know. But there's something more important to him now, more important questions that he needs to know the answer to.

“ _What if I'm right about all this?”_ Gavin had asked him. _“And if I'm wrong?”_

“Hey, Burnie?” He looks up at Burnie, who kneels next to him. “Do you know someone named Gavin Free?”


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I lied. As much as I love the fact that Part Two still has an open ending, I can't not post this after having taken three days to write it.

The sound and activity around them is slowly fading away. Fishermen are pulling in for the night, the shore is emptying out. They can hear crickets and echoing bird calls, and the waves are quiet as they wash against their ankles. As the sun sets, the sky is pink and orange and purple, and the mist is the colour of fire. They chat as they stand in the water, their toes slowly sinking into the fine sand, the wind and water chilling skin not covered by their jackets. They watch the sun setting lower, the sky getting darker; they'll go back to the town when it gets too dark to see.

They came out to check at the end of the month at first; then, after a few months, every couple of weeks. Now, it's been over a year and they stand on the beach at least once a week, waiting. For what, they're not sure. Anything.

It's been more than a year, though, and there's been nothing. They keep watching the water as the silence that has spread over the island drops between them; they keep watching the mist as it darkens. A soft breeze flows by them, and there's an unspoken agreement that after tonight, they won't keep vigil on the beach so often. They won't think of the ugly side of the coin.

Something brushes against Ray's heel as the waves wash in. He looks down, and as the tide comes again, he sees something in the water and bends to pick it up.

The light is almost gone when Geoff takes a breath and says, “You think he's all right?”

Ray lets the water drain off his find, and he hold it in his palm. It's a rose. Or it used to be, at least. The petals are fake, make from cloth so frayed that it's almost too hard to tell. The stem is made of wood and it's half rotted away. The only thing holding it all together is a rusting wire. He turns it over in his hand, wrings out the faded petals a little and almost breaks it.

“Yeah,” he says, “I think he's just fine.”

\--

The London Coast stretches over hundreds of miles of land, and to any traveller moving at a normal speed it would take weeks to cross it. He's been moving from town to town down the coast for more than three months, staying in each place for a couple days before moving on. He stays in busy inns and visits crowded bars and markets, talking to anyone who'll bother to listen to a man who supposedly came from nowhere.

The road split outside of Austin, and instead of going through the mountains, Michael went north, up and around the peaks, stopping in every unfamiliar place he came across – so, everywhere. He walked with a caravan and told stories to anyone who asked. When Burnie's money ran out, he stayed in a town called Norman until he'd made enough money to move again. From then on, he did an odd job or two when he came into a new town, made enough to get him to the next one down the trail.

The road curls back down to the coast and he follows it, and following after him are stories about an island with a mountain so far away that nobody knows of it. However, people are still happy to listen to the stories about a man named Gavin, and they tell Michael that if they ever see his missing friend, they'll tell him, “Michael's looking for you.”

It's been hard. On the island, nothing was lacking and life for its people was perfect. Here, whenever Michael runs out of money there's almost always somebody on the bench next to him with the same problem. He's seen a man crying over the fresh grave of his daughter, who died of a fever, and he's seen a fight in an alleyway for a loaf of bread. He walked for three days with a pilgrim who prayed every day for the safety of his sons, who'd left to fight in a war in the far north, and there are things that stalk the nights that Michael never dreamed of.

And yet, he still thinks that even though the people here live hard lives, they're living in a world with no mist. There isn't any border to oblivion here – he's seen the maps. If he were to go far enough east, he wouldn't hit a wall of mist, he'd find the Arcadian continent. If he sails south, he'll land at a place called Sahara. 

He'll go to those places if he has to, he thinks. For now, he moves west down the London Coast, and he tell everyone he meets the same story – just like he promised, he tells them about the best friend he ever had.

\--

At the western end of the London Coast is a city called Cardiff, and it's easily one of the largest cities he's been to; Michael ends up spending the entire afternoon after he arrived just walking up and down the same five streets, because he knows that if he's going to go wandering about here, he'll want to be able to remember where he's supposed to come back to. The next day, he wakes up ready to explore farther.

As he walks, he thinks about how long he's been travelling, how long it took him to reach Cardiff from Austin. _A long time_ is his first thought before he finishes the math. Almost six months. It's taken him almost half a year to go from town to town all the way down this side of the continent – north around the mountains, west along the coast and then north-west to Cardiff. He hasn't even figured out which way he's going to go after this – according to the map he bought (which is quickly becoming worn out) he could keep heading north, or turn east to venture through the plains that he'd only skirted along. 

It's been six months since he left Austin, which means that it's been more than a year since he left the island. As he follows other people moving through the web of streets, he thinks about it, remembers Geoff and Ray sending him off in the early morning as the sun climbed over the mountain. He wonders what they're doing while he's wandering around here.

Get out there as far as you can, Ray had told him. He lost the rose on the way, but there are roses here. Geoff told him to give them something to look forward to, and Michael wishes that he could tell them somehow – he wishes he could tell them that there is a goddamn _world_ here, and he wants to tell them about everything he's seen.

But he can't. All he has are the thoughts, and he can't send them over any distance. That's more painful than knowing that most of his journey has been on his own. Sure, he's walked sometimes with a merchant or pilgrim, and he's learned so much from these people that his head hurts sometimes, but he's never shaken the feeling that he is still isolated from them. These are their homes and Michael has never known anything outside the mist. He knows that his story is just that to the people he's met – a story.

But compared to all of this, the island has never seemed so tiny. It's miniscule compared to this land, dwarfed by just the size of this coast – hell, it's small even in comparison to this fucking city. 

And as if fate wants to prove his own thoughts to him, just to have some goddamn confirmation, Michael is lost before noon. 

Not that he doesn't know the feeling of not knowing where the fuck he is or what he's doing. Since waking up here, it's been a common feeling, and the initial fear has long worn off. He doesn't stop to ask direction (he'll do that if he starts getting desperate) and he keeps meandering past the shops and homes. Eventually he makes it to what is probably only one of the city's plazas – a wide open expanse of cobblestone with a large fountain at its centre. There are benches around its rim, and he sits down to rest while the spray cools his neck. Nobody minds him watching the crowds; he looks just like any other traveller passing through.

Although, he wonders if there's else anyone with an agenda like his – looking for something, or doing what they can with what they've been handed. 

When his feet are less sore and the back of his head is damp enough to become an annoyance, Michael stands up, stretches, takes a quick look at the streets that break off from the plaza, and then starts backtracking, retracing his steps back to the inn that he stayed in. He does the same thing the next day, but takes a different path, and he does the same thing the day after that, covering as much ground as he can, which isn't a lot since there are so many faces. All of them are unfamiliar, but he moves slowly, looking and hoping that he sees the one he knows he'll recognize. 

“ _Even if nothing changes... I don't think I'm ever going to forget that.”_

He finds himself at the fountain plaza often. He likes sitting on one of the benches, watching people young and old approach the water and toss coins in. He's been told that the closer the coin lands to the jets of water rising up, the more likely that their wish will come true. They're probably not going to come true at all, but at the very least these people believe in something.

A week after he arrives in the city, Michael sits on the bench, looks into the rippling water and tries to count the copper and silver coins that litter the basin. It's mostly a useless effort, because there are way too many to count. He wonders if anyone ever cleans the fountain out, or if the coins have just been piling up there since it was built. Then he asks himself why the people toss coins in the fountain if they want their wishes granted. They have gods, many gods, and they have more stars than Michael's ever known. Why not ask them? Do the gods want to be paid?

Michael turns away from the fountain at the thought. The gods he knows have been paid enough. The islanders have lived in prosperity for centuries, and the gods only know what happened to the lives they sacrificed. 

“ _What if I'm right about all of this, and there actually is something out there?”_

I sailed out here and I found it, Michael thinks, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees; and I haven't stopped since. If Gavin is wrong, he's told the story. If he's right, Michael still doesn't know. Does he have to pay the gods for that, too?

He stand up, pushes himself away from the fountain. The day is getting on and it's about time to go. Only one thing has ever given him any answers – moving forward.

“ _What if the people who go up the mountain don't actually die, they just... get put_ somewhere else _? Somewhere on the other side of the mist. And you could actually sail out there and find them...”_

“ _Hey, Michael?”_

He knows that he'd have regretted staying home, leaving Gavin's journey to someone else, just like Geoff said he would. He also said something about betting cash, but Michael doesn't need that, either. What would have happened if he hadn't gone to the temple the night before Gavin left? He'd probably be sitting in the temple right now.

“ _Michael?”_

He wouldn't have scoured the church's library to find the journal of the last man who attempted to escape the mist, and he sure as hell wouldn't have experienced the _things –_ the _tricks_ – for himself. 

“I wouldn't be looking for you right now,” he says to himself quietly, just a murmur among all the other voices in the crowd. 

“ _Michael?”_

Michael stops in his tracks, looks at the faces of the people around him. They pass by, glancing in his direction. Some are annoyed for stopping in the middle of the road so suddenly, but whatever they say doesn't matter to him. He's listening for something else, something...

_What if? What if I'm right?_

His heart skips a beat, and he turns on his heel; the fountain is behind him, faces he doesn't recognize. People standing with their backs to the water and flipping coins over their heads, making wishes. Nothing. He starts pushing his way back to the fountain, half on his toes, trying to see over the heads of the people that are taller than him.

“ _Michael!”_

It doesn't come from the fountain. He stops again, turns his head, looking. Not a trick, he thinks – don't let it be a trick, _fuck, I know I heard it_. 

“Gavin?”

Somebody shrieks, and his heart is pounding as he turns and sees a woman pulling her flower cart out of the way as a man comes running by it, just missing the wheels as he stumbles over his own feet. 

“ _Michael!”_

And for a split second, time is slow and Michael has no words, because a man with green eyes and a big nose is barrelling toward him, and it is the only familiar face he's seen in so, so long.

“ _You're my best friend, you know that?”_

“ _What if I'm right?”_

“ _Wherever you end up, you just stay there, and I'm going to come and find you.”_

Gavin crashes into him and embraces him with such force that Michael ends up swinging him around and almost falling down where they stand. His vision is blurry and Gavin's speaking nonsense in his shoulder – “You're here, I found you, _you're here!_ ” – and people are staring and watching them, but Michael doesn't give two fucks, because –

“You were right!” He chokes out, wetness on his cheeks. He's laughing and fucking crying at the same time. He takes a breath and shouts it for the gods and their stars and everyone else to hear, so that they can know – they can all know they were wrong:

“ _You were fucking right!”_


End file.
